Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

The Poll Bludger flatters himself to imagine that his posting from Friday on the state of the Queensland Coalition sent shockwaves through the Liberal Party and set light bulbs off over the heads of party heavies, prompting this report from today’s Courier Mail. The article quotes Liberal sources displeased that the National Party should still be contesting seats on the Gold Coast in this day and age, a difficult judgement to contest. An article by Stephen Wiesenthal in the Financial Review on Thursday (subscriber only so no link) provides a thorough overview of demographic developments in the area, in which the nation’s most rapid rate of urbanisation has soaked up waves of affluent emigrants from the southern states in a region once dominated by dairy farms. Federally the Gold Coast electorate of McPherson went from Country to Liberal Party control way back in 1972 and is currently held with a margin of 12.2 per cent. The newer seat of Moncrieff has been Liberal since its creation in 1984, with a National Party challenger in 2001 polling only 6.3 per cent against Liberal Steven Ciobo on 50.9 per cent. At the state level however, where a vote for the Liberal Party is a vote for a National Party premier, newcomers wanting a mainstream urban-oriented government have only one option. The Poll Bludger will not be the only one keeping a very careful eye on the Nationals’ performance in the winnable Gold Coast seats of Broadwater and Burleigh (plus not-winnable Southport), relative to that of Liberal candidates running in the tougher Currumbin, Mudgeeraba and Gaven.

For some time now the conventional wisdom has been that Malcolm Turnbull had muffed his assault on the Liberal preselection in Wentworth, the wily incumbent Peter King having thwarted him by harnessing support from old biddies within the electorate still maintaining the rage over Turnbull’s campaign of treason against Queen and country. However an article in today’s Sydney Sun-Herald reports the Turnbull camp is confident of having the membership of many of King’s stackees declared invalid. The article also gets down to brass tacks in terms of where the numbers stand in the arcane process by which the Liberals decide such things – 112 electorate delegates reportedly split about 55-50 in King’s favour (with the Turnbull camp presumably hopeful of an improvement on this score), 12 evenly balanced state executive votes, and a wild card in the form of 30 preselectors to be "drawn by lot from the 600-member NSW state council". The report says the ballot is expected on the weekend of February 28 and 29.

If you haven’t yet taken a look at the Queensland election section at On Line Opinion then do so now, and not just because they’ve been kind enough to provide me with a link.
The site promises forthcoming commentary from contributors including persistent Labor power-broker Mike Kaiser and John Wanna of Griffith University, but so far the main point of interest is the Currumbin2Cook election blog conducted by site publisher Graham Young, a one-time Queensland Liberal Party vice-president who has recently run foul of the party’s dominant Santoro/Caltabiano faction. Young has been keeping a close eye on the media campaign and provides a detailed level of policy-picking-apart lacking from my own modest effort.

Poor old Gary Morgan. Every second Tuesday the political class holds its breath in anticipation of the latest Newspoll result, but when figures are released from the Roy Morgan organisation, with its many decades of history behind it, no-one cares a damn. Obviously it’s entirely his own fault – I don’t know a single person anywhere who thought Labor were going to win on polling day in 2001, but with his family company’s reputation for reliability and sound judgement squarely on the line, Morgan bellowed from the roof-tops that just such a result was a lay-down misere.

Anyway, Morgan’s first Queensland state poll for the campaign came out today, although it was conducted over a six week period ending last weekend. Labor’s primary vote is on 51.5 per cent, which by Morgan’s reckoning is actually at the lower end of their band for the current term which has ranged from 51 to a frankly unbelievable 57.5 per cent. The Liberals have improved 3.5 per cent to record one of their better showings with 24 per cent, while Morgan maintains an admirable consistency in his measure of National Party support which has never wavered more than 1 per cent above or below its current level of 8 per cent (Newspoll is currently 5 per cent more generous). The Greens have today been talking up their showing of 6 per cent in this morning’s TNS poll but Morgan only gives them 4 per cent, behind One Nation on five. Over the long term, Morgan shows that One Nation have perked up a few per cent since the imprisonment of Hanson while the Greens’ result continues their pattern of apparently random fluctuation between 3 and 6 per cent. So given that it’s already been established that Morgan consistently has Queensland Labor a few percentage points above what seems realistic, there are essentially no surprises here.

Simultaneously Morgan has released a federal poll showing Labor with a two-party preferred score of 55.5 per cent, which seems a bit rich. Nevertheless opinion polls are best viewed by looking at long-term trends and there seems to be one emerging on the basis of Morgan’s recent results – since the ascension of Mark Latham, Labor’s results have gone from 38 per cent to 41, 42.5 and now 45 per cent. Most of this has come off the Greens, who reached a high-water mark just prior to Crean’s demise, and the Democrats, now plumbing all-time depths after Andrew Bartlett’s recent performance with just 1.5 per cent in the latest survey.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll reserve my judgement until Tuesday’s Newspoll.

Friday began with some media outlets reporting as fact that Emergency Services Minister and member for Townsville Mike Reynolds was about to pull the plug on his political career and stand aside in favour of Townsville mayor and Shepherson inquiry survivor Tony Mooney. Beattie and Reynolds had nipped the story in the bud by daybreak, but as was no doubt the intention of whoever started the rumour, the incident added a touch of drama and attendant publicity to the allegations surrounding him. These relate to an alleged approach to Greens candidate Theresa Millard offering assistance in her bid for a place on council if she kept a low profile during her state election campaign. The Greens have lodged a formal complaint with the Crime and Misconduct Commission over the matter, a prosecutable offence if they know the allegations to be untrue. For his part Reynolds has been notably vehement in his denials, telling the Townsville Bulletin that Millard, his former media adviser, harboured personal malice towards him. However, barring sensational findings against Reynolds by the CMC during the campaign period (and Queensland Electoral Commissioner Bob Longland told the Courier Mail on Thursday there was no prima facie case of bribery) the Poll Bludger’s judgement is that his 9.3 per cent margin two-party preferred margin will be enough to buffer him against Liberal candidate Margaret Shaw, while his existing 52 per cent primary vote should make him safe from Millard.

Merri Rose enjoyed a further campaign highlight overnight when she swore at television reporters on camera, as reported today in The Australian. The Poll Bludger is a big fan of rude words and not having been privy to footage of the incident, would love to hear from anyone who was – emails here please. With both parties jockeying for underdog status it would stand to reason that Lawrence Springborg would describe the Rose resignation as "no more than a mosquito bite on an elephant", but nonetheless the judgement is almost certainly correct. Even Rose’s Gold Coast electorate of Currumbin may not prove as interesting as The Poll Bludger has been suggesting – speaking on Brisbane radio on Thursday, the Courier Mail’s Mark Oberhardt said a senior Labor official had informed him that internal polling had them confident she would easily retain the seat.

The Courier Mail reports that something called TNS has conducted a poll from a respectable sample of 700 taken "at the height of the Merri Rose resignation scandal". To the extent that sense can be made of them, the results seem in line with The Poll Bludger’s expectations, showing a 55-45 two-party preferred split in Labor’s favour. The article reports an alarming-sounding 38 per cent primary vote for Labor, which is apparently "5 per cent lower than at the same time in the 2001 campaign", so obviously undecided respondents are not being distributed here (Labor in fact polled 49 per cent at the 2001 election). Typically though, Beattie has ignored the latter point and constructed an opportunity to predict impending disaster by talking of a "10 per cent primary vote swing against Labor", which assumes that every single undecided voter will vote against them. The poll has the Greens on 6 per cent and One Nation on 4, but frustratingly no result is given for the Coalition. Even less comprehensible in the revelation that "Labor has only 10 per cent of second preferences, the Coalition 38 per cent, independents 15 per cent, the Greens 12 per cent and One Nation 9 per cent" – this is presumably limited to those not supporting the major parties, in which case it would be a remarkable outcome given the high proportion of Greens voters represented, and is easy to dismiss given the small sample size. Unfortunately I only have the online article to go on for now – it may well be that the newspaper features a table that makes sense of everything.